Küba: Journey Against the Current
Springer Verlag, 2006

Želimir Žilnik

Renata Poljak

Publications

The publication Küba: Journey against the Current , a discoursive reader, explores different aspects of the award-winning film installation Küba by Kutluğ Ataman, that traveled 1,500 kilometers up the Danube River through essays and interviews. A geographic space with specific social, political and cultural contexts unfolds; at each stop – in Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia, Hungary, Slovakia, and Austria - a new artwork specifically commissioned by Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary was presented in dialogue with Ataman’s original installation.

Küba is a community of men, women and children who live in one of the most notorious ghettos in Istanbul, a shantytown slum that began life as a hideout for left-wing militants and other outsiders in the late 1950s. Since then it has developed into a cohesive society, presenting an impenetrable solidarity to the outside world. Today, its mostly Kurdish residents range from a petty criminal who steals in order to follow his obsession to collect pigeons, to a married woman and mother to two children who secretly is in love with somebody else, as well as to the community leader and political refugee. Their makeshift houses, built from scrap metal and soil, stand in the shadow of a twenty-first century megalopolis. It is a marginalized place that has learned to make do.

Filmmaker Kutluğ Ataman spent more than two years getting to know Küba’s inhabitants and filming them talk. Their stories are presented on old television sets as part of a 40-person audio-visual installation. In front of each TV is a chair, allowing only one viewer per set. Seen individually, from voice to voice, their soliloquies present a detailed mosaic of humaneness: terror, tragedy, love, obsession, resistance, survival. Seen together, the voices of Küba present a deeply moving communal portrait of the hidden society that they are proud to call home. Matei Bejenaru, Nedko Solakov, Želimir Žilnik, Renata Poljak, László Csáki & Szabolcs Pálfi, Anetta Mona Chisa & Lucia Tkácová, Emanuel Danesch & David Rych were invited by Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary to react and respond to the questions, contents and issues of Ataman's Küba with independent projects and works within the context of their own own socio-political environments. Each artistic intervention is elaborated in the publication with texts by Konstantin Akinsha, Sorin Antohi, Iara Boubnova, Sezgin Boynik, Boris Buden, Gabrielle Cram, Branislav Dimitrĳevic, Ivaylo Ditchev, Marina Grzinic, Francesca Thyssen-Bornemisza, Natasa Ilic Kristian Lukic, Boris Ondreicka, Zoran Pantelic, Irit Rogoff, Zoltan Sebök, Daniela Zyman.

Download sample pages

TBA21, Vienna

182 pages, English
ISBN: 3-9502064-0-X
15 €

edited by

Gabrielle Cram, Daniela Zyman
Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary

TEXTS BY

Konstantin Akinsha, Sorin Antohi, Iara Boubnova, Sezgin Boynik, Boris Buden, Gabrielle Cram, Branislav Dimitrĳevic, Ivaylo Ditchev, Marina Grzinic, Francesca Thyssen-Bornemisza, Natasa Ilic Kristian Lukic, Boris Ondreicka, Zoran Pantelic, Irit Rogoff, Zoltan Sebök, Daniela Zyman

design by

Thees Dohrn, Philipp von Rohden / Zitromat, Berlin

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Küba: Journey Against the Current
Springer Verlag, 2006

Küba: Journey against the Current | May 1–September 9, 2006
Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia, Hungary, Slovakia, Austria

Artists

Želimir Žilnik

Renata Poljak

Nedko Solakov

Kutluğ Ataman

Emanuel Danesch and David Rych

Anetta Mona Chisa and Lucia Tkácová

Küba: Journey Against the CurrentSpringer Verlag, 2006

Küba: Journey Against the Current
Springer Verlag, 2006